This invention relates to an apparatus for lining the inner wall of a vessel with bricks. More particularly, this invention relates to a brick lining apparatus comprising an operating station capable of being moved vertically along the axis of the vessel and including a rotary work platform, a non-rotary supporting stage carrying tee work platform by means of a bearing, a robot for laying the bricks, a monitoring booth, means of raising and lowering brick pallets, and at least one automatic brick-depalletizing mechanism for transferring the bricks from the pallets towards a novel stand-by station.
Various apparatuses employing robots, particularly for laying the refractory lining of a metallurgical converter, have recently been proposed. Of these apparatuses, an essential distinction can be made between two types, namely those in which the bricks are depalletized within the vessel, as in Luxembourg Patent Application No. 80.114 (corresponding to U.S. application Ser. No. 915,635 filed Oct. 6, 1986, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,708,562, assigned to the assignee hereof, all of the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference); and those in which depalletizing is carried out outside the vessel, as disclosed in Luxembourg Patent Application No. 86.382 (corresponding to U.S. application Ser. No. 033,138 filed Apr. 1, 1987, assigned to the assignee hereof, all of the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference). Each of these apparatuses has its own particular advantages. Thus, for example, the advantage of apparatuses with depalletization occurring inside the vessel is that execution takes place relatively quickly, since, in addition to the relatively short idle times necessary for changing the pallets, the two types of bricks required are permanently available on the work platform.
The advantage of the apparatuses with outside depalletization is that there is a reduction in the overall size of the platform. Such reductions make it possibile to install a comfortable monitoring booth on the platform thus contributing to the safety of the personnel supervising the brick-lining of the wall of the vessel. Another advantage of these apparatuses (outside depalletizing) is the possibility that standard robots can be used, that is, robots which do not have to be designed specially for the jobs for which they are intended. Unfortunately, these apparatuses require sophisticated hoists and complex programs for selectively delivering the two presently used configurations of bricks to the platform at the work rate of the robot laying them.